Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Very Own Protocol Droid

37signals.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 205 posts

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#91

Post by masonhensley »

jrajav wrote: post #30
whichdan wrote: post #21

"With Android (and T-Mobile) I killed my contract. Now I pay just $30/month. For $30/month I have unlimited texts, unlimited data, free tethering, and 100 minutes of talk" Anyone else have experience doing this? My monthly bill for an iPhone with AT&T is $76.40 which includes 300MB of data, 1000 messages, and a whopping 450 minutes (I do have ~2700 rollover minutes though). I don't feel strongly about Android vs iPho…

I have had the same T-Mobile plan for a while. I'm not sure what kind of information you want about it, but it pretty much works as advertised. The coverage and uptime is not as great as Verizon, but it's faster than AT&T (AT&T's network has been saturated since the iPhone lock-in). It's definitely not the worst choice for 4G data, and the price is obviously very competitive. Note that unlimited data is, as you proba…

Data point- I never have hit the limit on the $30 T-Mobile plan and use about ~3gb during an average month. I'm connected to wifi at work, home or friend's place ~18hrs a day.

Most iPhone users are limited to 2Gb right?

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#92

Post by gnufied »

M4v3R wrote: post #48
parfe wrote: post #7

> Twenty years of using Macs conditioned me to think, “well, that’s the Apple way.” It’s such a small price to pay for such a user-friendly device. Another Stockholm-syndrome patient cured! I recently took over a prototype project targeting the Mac. XCode is garbage. OS X itself actively works against improving your workflow. It's Apple's way or, well Apple's way. iOS is built to keep the user in a padded cell (aka W…

> XCode is garbage Once in a while I see an argument like this and I wonder - does this guy really do mobile development? For the better part of last year I was into Android development, in Eclipse. If XCode is garbage, I don't know what Eclipse is. Resource-hogging, buggy monster with seven heads with shit on them, probably. I could list annoyances of Eclipse that got me for hours. On the other hand, in last month I…

IntelliJ Idea is vastly superior and when developing on Android it is very easy to use Idea as first class IDE.

Compare this with iOS development. IntelliJ's AppCoder is nice, but because quite a lot of things can be only done from XCode, Appcoder is second class citizen. Let me re-iterate, if you haven't used Appcoder, it is a vastly superior IDE compared to Xcode any given day.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#93

Post by xauronx »

ChrisClark wrote: post #87
xauronx wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that they needed to was my comment. Personally, even as a mobile developer, customizing my phone is not my hobby. I'd prefer a new foreign car that has certain limitations to a used Jeep that I can extend in any way I want.

But you need specific skills to customize your Jeep. On Android it takes 30 seconds and no skill to install the keyboard you want. It's not a very hard thing to do, I'm sure as a mobile developer you don't mind installing apps other than the ones that come with your phone. A different keyboard is just another app to fulfil a need, go to the Store, click install, new keyboard. Done.

Not really. Parts are cheap and most are bolt on. It's just a matter of preference, which is why all of these droid vs apple discussions are circle jerks.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#94

Post by SonicSoul »

the "Evangelist" bit about this post irks me. So you've found the light, stop trying "Evangelize" saying things like "I’d like you to switch too".

I've used the ipod since the beginning, but i've also used windows until it made more sense to me to start using OSX. today i still use the ipod touch and an android, and windows. each has it's upsides (love the battery life on the touch) and downsides (there is a ton on Android). I'm not in any "camp" or going around telling people why they should switch to my phone. definitely hate the "apple way" even though i love my macbook pro.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#95

Post by [deleted] »

Irregardless wrote: post #28

There's no doubt Apple is playing catch-up with Android these days. Siri was their only real innovation in the last 3 iPhones, and Google leapfrogged it within months. Meanwhile, Apple is still trying to implement a decent notification system, their auto-correct is garbage, there's no file manager, you can't set a default browser (or default anything, for that matter), there are no widgets, no app shortcuts, no custo…

[deleted]

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#96

Post by egeozcan »

nicholassmith wrote: post #62
Irregardless wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Default will depend on which phone you get, but there's no shortage of great free ones in the market (Astro and ES File Explorer, for example). Also, Android phones work just like a USB drive if you want to drag and drop files then access them from another computer later. You can store anything you want and create your own folders, unlike the iPhone where you can only sync certain media types through iTunes. That's w…

Which everyone wants of course. Except me. Or my girlfriend. Or my parents. Or my sister. Or in fact, everyone I know with one. A feature that you think is critical is a feature that is critical for you . The refrain that iOS suffers from a lack of file exploration or drag and drop of any kind of content is based around the assumption that everyone wants that. Most people don't.

My mother kept asking me why I made her pay for "a device which can't replace a floppy disk". I'm an android user but I thought the limitations of the iPhone were actually a plus for my mother. It took me some time (and some fiddling with some "approved apps" to make things "work" for her) to understand that those small things could be real deal-breakers when not available.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#97

Post by DonnyV »

justinph wrote: post #70

I guess android works pretty slick if all you do is stream from the cloud. But, if you want to sync music with the phone it's a disaster. The Google-supported way is for me to put MP3s in a folder? Really? And some of the android phones (like the flagship nexus 4) don't support transfer via USB? Really? I have to do it via slow-ass WiFi and a third-party program like doubletwist? Total disaster.

Actually if your using Google Music, there's an option right next to the album to keep it on the device. I use it all the time, very nice.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#98

Post by RyanMcGreal »

nicholassmith wrote: post #62
Irregardless wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Default will depend on which phone you get, but there's no shortage of great free ones in the market (Astro and ES File Explorer, for example). Also, Android phones work just like a USB drive if you want to drag and drop files then access them from another computer later. You can store anything you want and create your own folders, unlike the iPhone where you can only sync certain media types through iTunes. That's w…

Which everyone wants of course. Except me. Or my girlfriend. Or my parents. Or my sister. Or in fact, everyone I know with one. A feature that you think is critical is a feature that is critical for you . The refrain that iOS suffers from a lack of file exploration or drag and drop of any kind of content is based around the assumption that everyone wants that. Most people don't.

> Except me. Or my girlfriend. Or my parents. Or my sister. Or in fact, everyone I know with one.

Yet Astro file manager has 35 million downloads. Perhaps you and your peers are not a representative sample.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#99

Post by Taylorious »

whichdan wrote: post #21

"With Android (and T-Mobile) I killed my contract. Now I pay just $30/month. For $30/month I have unlimited texts, unlimited data, free tethering, and 100 minutes of talk" Anyone else have experience doing this? My monthly bill for an iPhone with AT&T is $76.40 which includes 300MB of data, 1000 messages, and a whopping 450 minutes (I do have ~2700 rollover minutes though). I don't feel strongly about Android vs iPho…

I would suggest going with straighttalk. $45 a month unlimited everything and it uses AT&T networks. I always have a signal. I would suggest going with a good unlocked smartphone to take advantage of it (I went with the Nexus 4). In fact, you can buy a whole years worth of service at a time and it averages out to like $42 a month... not a huge savings but I just like having my phone taken care of for the whole year. No bills or anything to deal with. It just works.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#100

Post by calinet6 »

mikeash wrote: post #90
lukeschlather wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling Siri innovation is revisionist history. Google had voice search nearly a year when Apple launched Siri. Also, Apple bought Siri, they didn't invent it. Based on the interactions I've had with Siri/Google search (I have an Android) there haven't really been any innovations in the space since Google introduced voice search. It's useful, but imperfect.

Siri is not "voice search". Siri was very much an innovation when it was originally released as a standalone app, and was still ahead of the game when Apple bought it and integrated it. Google certainly may be ahead now, but to compare Siri to plunking what you say into a Google search box is just wrong.

Sure, it was innovative back before Apple bought it, but what Apple did to Siri was basically dumbing it down to the level of plunking things into a Google Search box.

Google Now really has improved things a lot.

Post reply on HN